We make it to the beach, turn right on the coastal promenade, and are amazed at the sight of...nothing. Nothing but gaping foundations and the occasional hint as to what once stood above: a fragmented Outback Steakhouse sign, the shredded canopy from a Ramada Inn snagged in the roots of a torn-up tree. There's something eerily familiar about this scene, something impossibly familiar, but I can't place it. It must be the climax of Planet of the Apes, I think, before it hits me: It's exactly like Huambo, once a jewel of a city in central Angola, which had been bombarded by 20 years of civil war and which I visited as a war correspondent. One day of wind has matched two decades of determined guerrilla artillery.
"Lord, lord," Hillebrand breathes. "Fifteen years in the business and I've never seen anything like this."
Weingartner is on his cell, reporting in to a Nationwide adjuster. "Georgie, you're not going to believe Gulfport when you get here. It's in-sane. If your Kmart is downtown, you're okay. But if it's on the beach, it's probably gone. Completely. We'll run by both and get back to you."
Weingartner clicks off and turns to Hillebrand. "This is more than I bargained for."
"Hang on till we find it," Hillebrand says. "Maybe we'll all get lucky."
We're on a recon mission for Nationwide, looking for a Kmart with a $5 million policy, to see if the goods can be saved with a speedy roof tarping and mold mitigation. If water damage can be halted within 48 hours, it could save Nationwide a fortune in demolition and rebuilding. It might even get the store open in a few days, instead of a few weeks or months, and dodge the bulk of lost-business payouts.
Some 10,000 adjusters are supposed to be pouring into Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi soon, but amazingly, none seems to have shown up yet. Usually insurance companies start at the center of the devastation and work outward, settling the claims of their most crippled customers before progressing to the fringes. This morning, the industry announced it would be doing the opposite: Because it couldn't guarantee "basic livable conditions"--food, water, beds, and lack of gunfire--it would be keeping the adjusters out of Mississippi and Louisiana.
Of course, that didn't stop Hillebrand and the other cowboys. The hurricane hit Mississippi full force on Monday night; by Tuesday morning, Hillebrand had his truck loaded with food, water, and equipment and was on his way. Meanwhile, Weingartner was back in his main office in Pennsylvania, making the crucial decisions that can make or break a disaster recovery company: guessing exactly where to preposition his crews, figuring out how much equipment to rent or relocate, deciding whether to lock in additional labor now or hold tight and wait for the work to be secured.
A few days later, Weingartner flew into Mobile, Ala. Until the adjusters arrive in person, the insurance companies use the disaster contractors as their unofficial scouts. Weingartner is happy to do the favor, of course. Keeping the adjusters and property managers happy is, literally, a full-time job. At this moment, even while the biggest opportunity of his career is unfolding, he has dispatched Jamie Moore to meet with Red Lobster's catastrophic loss guys in Florida, even though the seafood chain has had only two minor bouts of storm damage in five years. One adjuster in particular is notorious for calling Moore at bizarrely early hours of the morning, just to talk shop. It never turns into a work order, but Moore keeps picking up. You never know.
"It's the biggest dilemma I've got," says Weingartner. "Do I spend a $60,000 salary on a great job manager or on a great marketing rep? It doesn't matter how clean the job site is and how awesomely we dry out property if none of the insurance companies knows who we are. But what if we sell ourselves like gangbusters and don't have top-quality workers to back it up? I worry about it all the time."
We continue creeping along the coastal road in search of the Kmart. Judging by the devastation we've seen along the waterfront, Weingartner is getting a sick feeling that the damage will be way beyond Dynamic's capabilities. "Here it is," Hillebrand says, eyeing the GPS on his dash.
"Where?" Weingartner asks, swiveling his head.
Hillebrand looks up from the screen. "Oughta be around here some..."
"Ah, jeez," Weingartner says. "There it is." He's pointing to a sagging steel frame with a blue K on the skeletal roof. It's a bitter blow: He would have loved nothing better than to nail down a fat contract with a brand-name client--someone he can later put on his brochure. Now he's lost a full day and risked getting arrested for nothing.
Weingartner points to a sagging steel frame with a blue K on the skeletal roof. It's a bitter blow: "Good news and bad news, Georgie!"
Well, almost nothing. He makes the call to Nationwide and tries hard to keep his tone light. "Good news and bad news, Georgie!" he says brightly. "We found it, but..." Maybe there's no way to make George lighthearted about writing a $5 million check to Kmart, but Weingartner is trying his damnedest.
Disaster cowboys barely existed a decade ago. Recovery was basically a local, two-call affair: After your store or home was totaled by windstorm or fire, you called your Uncle Lou in construction and your insurance agent to pay him. Rebuilding work was regional, unpredictable, and little different--in terms of tools and skills--from any other contracting job. It was hard to imagine making a full-time living at it.
But in the early 1990s, two parallel influences converged in something of an industrial big bang that not only brought forth the masters of disasters but also allowed them to thrive. The first part of the bang was Hurricane Andrew. It slammed into Miami and southern Florida on August 24, 1992, then roared northwest along the Louisiana coast. Forty people were killed, 82,000 businesses were damaged, and some 100,000 residents of Dade County alone left for good. About three million addresses were left without power, meaning that in addition to property and loss of life compensation, insurers were on the hook for daily interruption-of-business payouts until the lights came on.
